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Former French colonial empire in south-east Asia. Having gained early influence in the area through assisting Gia-Long in establishing the Vietnamese empire in the early 19th century, the French colonized the area between the late 1850s and 1890s, using the term Indo-China to designate the final union of their colonies and dependencies within Annam, Cambodia, Cochin-China, Laos, and Tonkin. Nationalist movements aiming particularly at the formation of an independent and united Vietnam sprang up between the wars, and French influence in the area was fatally undermined in the early 1940s by the collaboration of the Vichy colonial administration with the Japanese. The Vietminh resistance movement became active during the war; having consolidated a peasant base, it resisted attempts by the French to reassert their control after 1945. French rule ended after the French Indo-China War.